MODERN MUNCHAUSEN

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3208, 26 July 1932, Page 6

MODERN MUNCHAUSEN

FANCIFUL TALES OF THE ARCTIC. Jan Welz!,, a Czech by birth, spent thirty years in the Arctic, and when he returned to his native land he told people about his wonderful adventures in the frozen north. Two Czech journalists took down Jan's story, and it has been translated into English and published under the title " Thirty Years in the Golden North," with a foreword by Karef Capek. Jan is not an educated man, but apparently he has remarkable powers of imagination, for some of his experiences tax the reader's credulity.

In 1893 he was working at Irkutck, on the railway across Siberia, and he decided to set out and see the world. But instead of making his way to the centres of civilisation he went north to the sparsely inhabited Arctic regions. Much of the journey he made on foot, but eventually he bought a horse and cart. He was in no hurry, and he spent a great deal of time in some of the villages along his route. He sold his horse and cart, and bought four reindeer. He left the reindeer behind when he shipped in an Arctic whaler, but when he returned he received a warm welcome from these animals. " I sat down on a case and stared out to sea after the disappearing vessel (i.e., the whaler from he had been .paid off). When I stood up my reindeer were making straight for me. They galloped up; it was plain to see how pleased they were to see me; their eyes sparkled, and they put their forefeet on my shoulders."

He came across a small tribe of Eskimos, and lived with them for some years in the rocks. He gives an account of a Polar mail coach—a sledge drawn; by 150 dogs, the leader on a separate rope half a mile long. How a dog could drag half a mile of rope he does not explain. Thirty men travelled with the mail coach, and it was guarded from wolves by seven men, who travelled besides it in snowsnoe's. Jan owned a pack of seven dogs, which increased and* multiplied po rapidly that in a few months the pack numbered 800. The Atc'/ic does nob seem- to be the sort of p)ace in which money 'S made rapidly, but Ja.i states that he- paid £200,009 for a whaling ship which he bought from ''the former captain of the vessel. Perhaps he made his money out of suinmer boarders, for he mentions that he charged an .American £5600 as hoard for his wife, who had been brought to. the Arctic to cure her of tuberculosis. , .. . ;